Fundamentally the religion of the Indians of California was very
similar to that of savage and uncivilized races the world over. Like
all such peoples, the California Indians were in an animistic state of
mind, in which they attributed life, intelligence, and especially
supernatural power, to virtually all living and lifeless things. They
lacked no less the ideas and practices of shamanism, the universal
accompaniment of animism: namely, the belief that certain men, through
communication with the animate supernatural world, had the power to
accomplish what was contrary to, or rather above, the events of daily
ordinary experience, which latter in so far as they were distinguished
from the happenings caused by supernatural agencies, were of natural,
meaningless, and, as it were, accidental origin. As in most parts of
the world, belief in shamanistic power was centered most strongly about
disease and death, which among most tribes were not only believed to be
dispellable but to be entirely caused by shamans. In common with the
other American Indians, those of California made dancing, and with it
always singing, a conspicuous part of nearly all their ceremonies that
were of a public or tribal nature. They differed from almost all other
tribes of North America in showing a much weaker development of the
ritualism, and symbolism shading into pictography, that constitute
perhaps the most distinctive feature of the religion of the Americans
as a whole. Practically all the approaches to a system of writing
devised in North America, whether in Mexico, Yucatan, or among the
tribes of the United States and Canada, are the direct outcome of a
desire of religious expression. The California Indians however were
remarkably free from even traces of this tendency, equally in their
religion and in the more practical aspects of their life. In many parts
of North America, and more often where the culture was considerably
developed than where it was rude, there was a considerable amount of
fetishism, not of the crass and so to speak superstitious type of
Africa, but rather as an accompaniment and result of over-symbolism.
This fetishistic tendency was very slightly developed in California,
and this in spite of--or as an Americanist could more properly say on
account of--the generally rude and primitive condition of culture. By
contrast, as the action and the visible symbol were a less important
means of religious expression, the word, both spoken and sung, was of
greater significance in California. The weakness of the ritualistic
tendency is however again marked in the circumstance that the exact
form of religious speech was frequently less regarded than its
substance. In this aspect the Indians of California differed widely
from such nations as the Egyptians and the peoples of Asia, where the
efficacy of the word and speech used for a religious purpose was
usually directly dependent upon the accuracy of their external and
audible rendering, even to their pronunciation and intonation.
[1] This paper may be cited as Univ. Calif. Publ. Am. Arch.
Ethn., Vol. 4, No. 6.
As an ethnographic province the greater part of California plainly
forms a unit. There are, however, two portions of the present political
state that showed much cultural distinctness in times of native life
and that must usually be kept apart in all matters of ethnological and
religious consideration. One of these divergent culture areas comprised
the extreme northwestern corner of the state, in the drainage of the
lower Klamath and about Humboldt Bay. The other consisted of what is
now usually known as Southern California, extending from the Tehachapi
pass and mountains in the interior, and from Point Conception on the
coast, southward to the Mexican boundary. The religion of the Indians
of the peninsula of Lower California is very little known from
literature, and the people themselves are almost extinct. It is
probable that it was more or less different from the forms of religion
occurring in Southern California, that is to say, the southern part of
the American state of California. Ethnographically Southern California
was considerably diversified. The tribes of the plains and mountains
near the sea must be distinguished on the one hand from those of the
desert interior and of the valley of the Colorado river, and on the
other from those of the Santa Barbara archipelago and the adjacent
coast of the mainland to the north. The latter island group of tribes
has become entirely extinct without leaving more than the merest trace
of records of its religion. The two other groups, the sea-ward and the
interior, apparently presented a much greater uniformity in religion
than in their material and social life, so much so that in the present
connection all the tribes of Southern California of whom anything is
known may be regarded as constituting a single ethnographic province.
The culture of the small Northwestern area was in every way, and that
of the larger Southern province at least in some respects, more highly
organized and complex than that of the still larger and principal
Central region, which comprised at least two-thirds of the state and
which, if such a selection is to be made, must be considered as the
most typically Californian.
The religious practices of the Indians of California fall into three
well marked divisions: (1) such observances as are followed and
executed by individuals, although their perpetuation is traditionary
and tribal; that is to say, customary observances; (2) individual
practices resting upon a direct personal communication of an individual
with the supernatural world; in other words, shamanism; (3) observances
and practices which are not only the common property of the tribe by
tradition, but in which the entire tribe or community directly or
indirectly participates; in other words, ceremonies.